Dan Brood: Looking back on the phenomenal amateur career of Adley Rutschman

Whenever he was on the diamond or gridiron, everyone was waiting for something special to happen — and it usually did.

By Dan Brood 

I’ve been doing this job, in one form or another, for a very long time. 

In that time, I’ve covered some amazing athletes.

I’ve gotten to know them, talk with them, see and report on their accomplishments.

The best?

Well, I’m not going to go there.

It would be hard to choose.

But I will say this: There’s only one athlete I’ve covered that, later in life, I drafted for a fantasy league team.

There’s only one athlete I’ve covered that has been the No. 1 overall draft pick in a major professional sport.

There’s only one athlete I’ve covered who has kicked a 63-yard field goal.

I think you know where I’m going here. That one athlete — a special athlete from a special family — is Adley Rutschman.

It was a privilege, maybe even an honor, to get to cover Adley during his days playing baseball and football at Sherwood High School.

The best thing I can say about Adley is that when he played for the Bowmen, everyone seemed to like him — teammates, opponents, students, parents, grandparents, sportswriters. And everyone also respected him.

When he was on the diamond or gridiron, everyone was waiting for something special to happen. And, many times, it did.

A big factor in Adley’s success, and everything that goes with it, seems to be his family.

The first member of the Rutschman family that I actually met was Adley’s mother, Carol “Mojo” Rutschman.

When I started covering prep sports in this area long ago, Carol was the girls golf coach at Tigard High School. 

Carol was, and still is, very pleasant and friendly. She was also very easy to work with and patient with a sports reporter new to the area. She was well-liked and well-respected by her team and by opposing teams — sound familiar? And, to no surprise, she really knew how to coach.

Then there’s Adley’s father, Randy Rutschman, a longtime baseball coach/instructor in the area.

The best way to describe Randy is that he very well might be the nicest guy ever. Always friendly, always smiling, and if you want to know anything about playing baseball, Randy Rutschman is the guy to ask.

Carol and Randy Rutschman also have been teachers in the Tigard-Tualatin School District.

Adley’s younger sister, Josie, was a standout doubles player for the Sherwood High School girls tennis team.

Adley’s grandfather, of course, is Ad Rutschman, legendary former Linfield University football coach and a member of the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame. 

Yes, it’s a heck of a family.

And Adley fits right in. 

I first sort of heard of Adley back in 2006, when he was 8 years old and won a Pepsi Pitch, Hit and Run event held at what was then known as Safeco Field in Seattle.

In 2012, the Sherwood High School baseball team boasted a freshman phenom named Zak Taylor (who would be Adley’s teammate both with the Bowmen and at Oregon State University, where the Sherwood duo helped the Beavers win the 2018 NCAA national title). I remember talking with then-Sherwood baseball coach Jon Strohmaier about Taylor, who was really, really good, and Strohmaier saying something like, “and wait until you see the kid we have coming up here next year.”

That kid, of course, was Adley Rutschman.

And, yes, Rutschman was very impressive, right from the first time I saw him on the baseball field at Sherwood.

I’ve always said that, in any sport, you can tell when someone is really good when they make things look effortless, like they’re not even trying.

Adley was that way — fielding, hitting, everything. His actions looked so smooth, like it was totally effortless.

He just looked like the prototypical baseball player right from the start.

As impressive as he was on the baseball diamond, the most amazing thing I saw Adley do at the high school level came on the football field.

Before we go any further, something else unique about Adley, which still amazes me to this day, is that he throws a baseball right-handed, but he kicks a football left-footed.

That takes us back to the gridiron. 

It was Nov. 8, 2015, and the Sherwood High School football team was hosting neighboring Tigard in a Class 6A second-round state playoff game. That night was miserable. It was rainy, it was windy, and it was cold — but the Bowmen were red hot.

Sherwood, getting big plays on offense and defense, jumped out to a 35-7 lead as the first half was winding down. The Bowmen had the ball on the Tigard 46-yard line when they called timeout with 2.9 seconds left in the second quarter. I was starting to look for a sheltered place to warm up and dry off during the halftime break when I noticed the Sherwood coaches gathered and, to the right, Bowmen senior Tanner Dillree hyping up his buddy, Adley Rutschman.

Yes, Sherwood was sending Rutschman out to try a 63-yard field goal to end the half.

Now, part of me still wanted to search out some shelter, but I knew that, like I said before, with Adley, something special could always happen. So, I stood in the rain and focused my wrapped-up camera on the spot where Sherwood quarterback/holder Adam Vasquez would put down the football for Rutschman to kick. 

And, wow, did he ever kick it. There was a “thud” that could be heard over the rain. The ball took off, and sailed, and sailed, and sailed. It felt like it was in the air forever, until it sailed over the crossbar.

Absolutely amazing.

“I tried not to think too much. I stuck to what was working,” Rutschman told me after that game. “It felt real good. I saw it curve in at the last second. I couldn’t help but smile.”

Yes, Rutschman had a big wind behind him on that kick, but he still had to kick the football more than 63 yards, and he had to kick it straight for more than 63 yards. If you want to be impressed by that, go out to a football field, stand on the 47-yard line, and just look how far the goalpost is on the opposite end of the field. Yes, impressive. I was definitely impressed, but this was Adley Rutschman, so I wasn’t totally surprised. 

Rutschman’s 63-yard field goal set an Oregon record, besting the previous mark of 57 yards by Sunset’s Paul Burton in 1991. Coincidentally, I was at the game when Burton made his long kick, so I’m guessing I’m the only person who has seen the two longest high school field goals in state history. 

But as good of a kicker as he was — and I think that, if he focused on only that, Rutschman could have kicked at the highest level — his future was on the baseball diamond.

Without overstating things, he was a natural.

I remember Rutschman playing third base during his early time with the Sherwood varsity. He would go on to serve in a closer role on the mound, and he was basically unhittable. I remember hearing talk that he could hit 97 miles per hour.

Before his junior baseball season at Sherwood, however, Rutschman suffered an ulnar collateral ligament injury (near the elbow). He missed two-and-a-half weeks of action, and when he returned, he could only serve as the Bowmen’s designated hitter.

He was a heck of a designated hitter, earning first-team all-Three Rivers League and all-state honors. But something was missing.

“It was tough not being able to help out the team on defense,” Rutschman told me that summer.

Well, that summer, it was a motivated Rutschman — and a motivated Adley Rutschman is an impressive Adley Rutschman.

During the summer of 2015, Rutschman played for both the Sherwood Oregon Independent Baseball Association squad, helping lead the Bowmen to the OIBA playoffs, and for the Portland Baseball Club 18U squad. 

It was with the Portland Baseball Club team that he had an incredible performance, playing at the Willamette Classic, held June 19-22 that year at Willamette University in Salem.

In the tournament opener, Rutschman hit for the cycle. In the team’s next game, he came up a single short of again hitting for the cycle. In the team’s two games on the final day of the tournament, he went 8 for 10 with three home runs. 

Once again, impressive.

It also set the tone for Rutschman’s senior season with the Sherwood High School baseball team.

As a Bowmen senior, Rutschman batted .333 with three home runs, eight doubles, 14 RBIs, 20 runs, 28 walks and an on-base percentage of .524. In 14 innings on the mound, he had a 1.00 earned-run average, a 2-0 record, five saves, 24 strikeouts and nine walks. At catcher, he had a fielding percentage of .989, with 22 assists, 151 putouts and just two errors.

He was a first-team all-Three Rivers League pick at catcher and received honorable mention at pitcher. He earned first-team Class 6A all-state accolades as a utility player. He was tabbed the Gatorade Player of the Year for the state, and he was the Oregon Sports Award Prep Baseball Player of the Year. 

Despite everything Rutschman accomplished on the baseball field for the Bowmen, his uniform No. 10 has yet to be retired for Sherwood. In fact, this past season, Bowmen sophomore pitcher Nolan Umlandt proudly wore No. 10.

“I got it my freshman year, and I figured out that Adley wore it, and I just wanted to keep on wearing it,” Umlandt said after helping lead the Bowmen to a 1-0 win over Tualatin in a Class 6A state playoff second-round game May 25 at Sherwood High School. “It’s such an honor to wear it, but he can have it back any time he wants it. He can come get it right now, but for now, I’m honored to wear it.”

The respect and admiration that almost everyone has for Adley Rutschman is almost indescribable. I remember when he signed his national letter of intent to play college baseball at Oregon State University during a ceremony at Sherwood High School on Nov. 18, 2015.

Everyone was there, and everyone wanted their picture with Adley — family, teammates, coaches, teachers, classmates.

What Adley Rutschman did at Oregon State was nothing short of legendary — and, as my wife will tell you, that’s not a word I like to use very often. 

He helped the Beavers win the 2018 College World Series, collecting a record 17 hits as well as 13 RBIs in being named the College World Series Most Outstanding Player. In 2019, Rutschman was named the Collegiate Baseball Player of the Year.

I, along with many other people in the area, was anxiously watching when Adley was the first player selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the 2019 baseball draft. I was also watching when he made his major league debut May 21 of this year, getting his first hit, a triple, for Baltimore in a 6-1 loss to Tampa Bay.

And, of course, he hit his first major league home run June 15 — a special moment for a special player.

It’s also really fun, and kind of crazy, having Adley as my current starting catcher on my Yahoo Sports fantasy baseball team (along with many Seattle players — yes, I’m a Mariners homer).

All of those things are so memorable. But I’ll also remember the many times I interviewed Adley in high school, with Adley always smiling, well-spoken, polite and respectful.

I’ll remember Adley showing up at the Sherwood football home opener in 2019, after signing his initial contract with the Orioles, standing, with a smile on his face, behind the huge crowd of Bowmen fans that stormed the field following the win over Sprague that night. 

As for Adley’s future with Baltimore, I don’t want to make predictions, but I’m sure of one thing: Orioles fans are going to find out what people in Sherwood, Tigard, Tualatin and Corvallis, as well as college baseball fans around the country, have known for a long time now — when Adley Rutschman is on the field, something special is likely to happen.

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Dan Brood, who has a career-long field goal of 42 yards, is a freelance writer/photographer with SBLive.